Stanford physicist Carl Wieman is on a quest to bury the big lecture in favor of evidence-based techniques. But it's not clear higher education is listening.
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@teach2learnsc
Stanford physicist Carl Wieman is on a quest to bury the big lecture in favor of evidence-based techniques. But it's not clear higher education is listening.
You may never be as funny, approachable, or creative as your favorite teacher — the key is to try.
Many colleges are taking steps to help faculty members motivate and engage their students as new technology and research on effective techniques become available.
Think you know everything there is to know about smart studying? You may be surprised by some of the past year’s research. Below are 15 new insights on how to prep for exams and boost your academic achievements in general. 1. Learn slightly differently each time. When acquiring a new skill, make slight changes during each... Read More
Teaching is Like Composting
Faculty Focus 11 May 2016
By Maryellen Weimer, PhD
I started composting at our summer place in 2009, and now I’m a convert. In the summer, we live on an island that’s mostly rock covered with something the locals call “organic matter.” Growing anything this far north on this soil base is challenging, but compost has made a big difference. My bleeding hearts, campanulas, delphinium, phlox, and coral bells are far more impressive than they used to be.
I wrote a blog post about composting when I first got started with it, and it seemed that it might merit a revisit. My thinking back then was that education was a process similar to composting. “You take a disparate collection of ideas, information, and toss them into a student.” (I’d add skills to the list now.) Good compost is a 50/50 blend of greens and browns (food scraps and garden detritus), layered in and mixed regularly. The booklet that accompanied my composter recommended chopping up items before adding them. Most of us do chop our course content into smaller pieces for our students, but courses continue to be very separate learning experiences.
Also, composting is expedited with regular mixing. We ought to be mixing our various course materials more regularly and systematically. Left on their own, students don’t push themselves to make connections between the content in the different courses they take. You can see that in how they organize their materials. They have a separate notebook or computer folder for each course. They don’t want to get their courses mixed up, and with different assignments, requirements, and due dates, that makes sense. But in my composter, eggshells mix with coffee grounds, banana peels rub against corn husks, and pine needles poke out of everything. The mixing makes the individual items less recognizable and more like parts of a whole—just like messy problems blur and blend the boundaries between knowledge domains.
The goal of composting is what comes out at the end—brown, nutrient-rich soil. Oh, you can still see bits of eggshell and the occasional avocado pit, but it’s mostly dirt with a wonderful, earthy smell. At the end of four years (or sometimes more), students come out of the educational composter looking and acting a whole lot different than they did when they first entered. At graduation, the effects of individual courses and teachers are indistinguishable from the outcome of the whole experience.
We can stand in awe of the process, but what happens in the composter really isn’t all that mysterious, and it certainly isn’t beyond our ability to control the process in significant ways. For example, we know that for best results, we should place the composter out of direct sun and dry hot winds. The transformation of food scraps and leaves into soil is accomplished by microorganisms that need the right balance of oxygen, water, and nitrogen. Compost is a living thing that doesn’t tolerate neglect well. Likewise, we can create classroom climates that promote learning. With care, attention, and the right balance of intellectual nutrients, students also grow and develop more impressively.
The microorganisms responsible for transforming the greens and browns into soil do most of their work in the warm core of the composter. Education that changes students also happens at the center of who they are as human beings. It changes how they think about themselves, what they believe about others, and what they aspire to accomplish in the world. These aren’t the kind of changes you can see happening. Nothing looks all that different from day-to-day or in one course, but in a healthy compost heap, the microbes are always at work.
Compost accomplishes a variety of purposes. It improves soil structure by binding particles together. It aerates clay soils and helps sandy soils retain water. If the pH of the soil shifts, compost acts as a buffer, protecting the plants. Education accomplishes just as many varied purposes. It enriches the lives of individuals, enables cultures to look for connections beyond their borders, and makes democracies work. Educational composting isn’t always glamorous, but it’s a worthy endeavor.
A purposeful integration of our teaching persona helps link students with content in subtle ways, leading to more meaningful learning. Here are 5 examples.
Here are some great suggestions about how we can use our own experience and persona to get students to engage with our class.
Get Students Off Cell Phones in Class
I wonder if this would work with our students?
http://college.usatoday.com/2015/09/23/pocket-points-app/
Friday 5 February 2016
Most of us spend our teaching careers isolated within our offices, classrooms, departments and disciplines. Only after teaching 20 years did I discover how much I could learn by venturing into the wider world of teaching and learning and meeting other faculty and disciplines there.
I now accept that teaching and learning is a process that takes place between people, and as such, all participants in that process have responsibilities.
Monday 9 November 2015
This article describes the way I feel sometimes. A good reminder for me about the shared responsibility we have with students for their learning.
If students better understood why they're putting time and energy into being successful in school, they would become more engaged in their learning.
Wednesday 28 October 2015
In this Faculty Focus article I learned the difference between a teaching philosophy and a learning philosophy and how to help students develop an awareness of their learning philosophy. A learning philosophy can be a powerful way to get students more engaged and responsible for their own learning.
Students who are engaged and organized in their learning process succeed, but are there ways in which you, as an instructor or professor, can help enable posit…
Wednesday 7 October 2015
Here are some good tips to help students learn more effectively
Keep Learning
I just discovered another good teaching & learning blog that also deals with technology. http://learning.instructure.com
What is Education/Pedagogy?
Friday 18 Sep 2015
Thanks to Dick Latham for giving me this article that explores the true nature of pedagogy and education.
"Education is a deliberate process of drawing out learning (educere), of encouraging and giving time to discovery. It is an intentional act. It is a social process – ‘a process of living and not a preparation for future living’." John Dewey
http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/
From a Discourse of Deficiency to a Discourse of Faith
Wednesday 16 Sep 2015
"Like my students, I am in a constant state of becoming. I am learning as much from them as they are from me. I think it’s time to replace the discourse of deficiency with something more powerful: faith."
http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/philosophy-of-teaching/from-a-discourse-of-deficiency-to-a-discourse-of-faith/
Here are some interesting suggestions on how to get your students to learn from your syllabus.
There’s only one first day of class. Here are some ideas for taking advantage of opportunities that are not available on any other day of the course.
Wednesday 19 August 2015
Student success and retention begins the first day of class. Don’t waste the opportunity by spending the whole session going over the syllabus and procedures. Do something that gets students connected - with the subject, with you, and with each other. Start building a genuine learning community. In addition to the above Faculty Focus article, another good resource is the book Successful Beginnings for College Teaching: Engaging your students from the first day by Angela McGlynn. You can find a copy in the Teaching Resource Centers in the libraries at Main, Palmer, and Berkeley campuses.